


Afterburn

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Series: We'll Sleep Tonight Universe [2]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - World War II, Coda, F/M, Post-War, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:52:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war ends, and Jim comes to fulfill a promise. A Christmas coda to We’ll Sleep Tonight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Afterburn

**Author's Note:**

> Though I started planning this shortly after _We’ll Sleep Tonight_ was posted, I hit a few snags in my writing plans for the holidays, and this wasn’t finished until, um, now. This story can be accompanied by [its inspiration](http://pics.livejournal.com/echoinautumn/pic/00001bs5), which came from [Sex Is Not The Enemy.](http://sexisnottheenemy.tumblr.com/) So, Merry Christmas!
> 
> This isn’t _exactly_ retcon, but one of my personal issues with the way Jim and Nora’s storyline ended (the angst not-withstanding) was that I felt like I’d accidentally implied a weakness and dependence on Jim that I didn’t mean to. In part, this is addressing that, and in part examining further how ill-equipped Jim is for a situation that he can’t bluster his way through. Think of this as a brief clarification of those things about them, while shifting focus from Hikaru and Polina onto them and filling the gap between where they left off and their loosely implied fate in the epilogue.

*

Jim hears Nora before he even sees her, while he’s still hopping out of the jeep and looking at the hospital she’s been assigned to since the end of the war. A glass bottle comes rocketing out the door to her office, marked with a sign reading CPT. McCOY, ELEANOR H., and crashes into the ice at his feet, followed by the soldier she must be lambasting, who looks in fear of his life, and not at all particularly ill to start with. Jim smiles to himself and sidesteps him, laughing aloud when the man sees him and falls over himself to salute.

“At ease, soldier. Merry Christmas,” he says and waves him along, jogging up the stairs and walking into the small room, lit by a single electric bulb over her desk.

Nora has her back to him, but he recognizes her immediately by the messy pile of hair on the back of her head, the harried slump to her shoulders. Jim takes off his hat and admires her for only a moment before he clears his throat. He should be feeling some kind of ambivalence about seeing her again, given the circumstances of their last conversation, and he isn’t even sure if she’ll be happy to see him, but the war is over and here he is, just like he said he’d be.

“I swear to God, Mitchell. Can’t you leave a woman alone on Christmas Eve?” She sighs in a rough, rolling drawl that promises vitriol when she turns around. Jim can see the fire drain out of her when her eyes find him instead of the guy she chased out only a minute before. “Jesus _Christ._ ”

He tucks his hat under his arm and smiles disarmingly, even as he’s unsure whether to interpret that as rejection or an innocently surprised outburst. “I heard you were still out here, and then thought you might be spending Christmas alone this year.” He took a chance, knowing damn well her husband could have come for the holiday, but that seems unlikely, even with the Allies in control of a divided and harmless Germany. Jim isn’t even sure what he’d do if the man _was_ there. No one but Pike knows about their affair now, and he’s certain Nora wants to keep it that way, and not only to avoid the court martial.

“You came all the way from England to spend Christmas with me?” she asks. Jim takes that as an invitation to close the door behind him and walk toward her. Her eyes are worn and tired, and he can see now that she’s cut her hair shorter than it was in England.

“Berlin, actually,” he corrects gently and looks down at the desk, the small heap of medals he knows from reading her personnel records that she earned in field hospitals, doing what she joined the Army to do. When he looks back up from the stacks of paper, books, and a dozen different pens, her eyes have softened. “Merry Christmas, Bones.”

“Damn you,” she huffs in exasperation, but there’s none of the bitterness he expected to hear. “I’m not done here for another couple of hours, you know. I don’t care if it’s Christmas, I don’t have time to entertain you right now.”

“It’s Christmas, Bones,” he protests, and leans against the desk. “At least take the night off, even if you’re not going to spend it with me.”

She pauses and stops her pacing beside the desk, near enough to him that Jim can smell her perfume under a thin layer of sweat, of a day of work in the hospital. He doesn’t say anything to her, not when he wants to grab her arms and make her _look at him._ “You shouldn’t have come here, Jim,” Nora says, but he already knows that.

“You could wish me a merry Christmas, you know,” he teases and closes a hand into a fist to keep from touching her. Instead, he tries to look innocuous when he turns his face down toward hers and smiles, “I’ve got a room at the guest house downtown. Come eat dinner with me. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“And then you’ll charm me into the soft featherbed they’ve got set out for you?” she spits back, and Jim actually laughs while she continues, “Don’t you have a dozen other women you could spend Christmas with?”

“Sure I do, but I wanted to spend it with you.” Her dark look tells him that he’d be in trouble for saying that if she cared enough, which she of course does. Jim hasn’t been _pining_ for her, at least not obviously. He’s flirted and he’s had other affairs, and then he’s had more than his share of casual one-time flings with local girls. None of them were Nora, though; none lasted so long or meant so much as she did.

“Oh, so it’s just my turn this year.” Jim laughs again, doesn’t mean it at all, and regret flashes across her face. She huffs again and rubs her forehead in a way that suggests that he’s getting to her and she doesn’t like it. “I hate when you do that to me. That thing where I know what you’re thinking.”

“You mean that thing where you know me too well?” His laugh fades slowly and he rests his hand over hers, waiting for her to shake it off and walk away. When she doesn’t, he lowers his voice and leans closer to her. “I said I wouldn’t come see you until the war was over. The war’s over, so I came.”

“I didn’t mean _this._ I meant—”

“You meant that I wasn’t supposed to come at all, I know,” he finishes for her smoothly, and she looks up at him with wide, surprised eyes. Jim grins, “You’re not the only one who can read minds, Bones. Tell me it—what we were doing—tell me—”

She doesn’t allow him to finish. “Tell me you didn’t come here to harass me about something I said years ago.” The tone in her voice is a challenge.

Jim releases her hand and pulls away, stealing one more look at her medals. Then he reaches into his pocket for the slip of paper with the name of the guest house he’s staying in printed across the top in neat, slanted handwriting and sets it neatly on the desk, next to the file she has open. “You can find me here if you change your mind about dinner. Merry Christmas, Captain McCoy.”

She scoffs at him, but then she picks up the paper and closes her fist around it. “Merry Christmas, Major,” she says by way of farewell, and then nothing more as Jim retreats back out the door without a backward glance.

He’s alone with a jug of mulled wine the innkeeper brought him with a cheery, red-cheeked smile when there’s another knock on the door late that night, after the cheerful sounds of the innkeeper’s family enjoying their Christmas in the main room have faded away. Jim rolls his eyes and looks out at the falling snow one last time before he pushes himself to his feet and calls in German that he’s coming. When he opens the door, though, Nora looks up at him suspiciously, carrying a full bottle and wearing the same uniform he saw her in earlier, her wool overcoat only half-buttoned.

“Were you expecting the girl from downstairs?” she asks bluntly, and he steps aside to let her in, but she doesn’t move from the doorway.

“I was, actually,” he says honestly. “I was expecting to have to turn her away.”

She steps around him without saying anything, sets the bottle on the table next to his cooling wine, and begins unbuttoning her coat. “Good answer,” she finally says to him, peering into the silver jug as if she’s trying to evaluate the quality of Jim’s company and lack thereof by the smell of the mulled wine. “Your reputation precedes you, as usual.”

Jim cracks a smile and closes the door before anyone can see inside and get the wrong idea—or the very right one. “I’m curious what they say about me.”

“Nothing flattering.” Nora empties his cup of wine and replaces the deep garnet with the sharp, clear amber from her bottle, then holds it out for him.

Jim takes it from her. “Nothing you didn’t know.”

“Nothing I didn’t know,” she sighs and touches the thick grain of the wooden table. “I almost didn’t come.” This isn’t anything Jim doesn’t know either, so he just looks away and takes a drink of her whiskey, walking toward the window. The wine seems to have had the opposite effect on him than it did on the innkeeper, and now he’s just introspective and regretful.

“I bet you nearly turned back,” he teases and evaluates the whiskey she brought with her. Nora doesn’t flinch when he tosses the rest of it back and sets the glass on the table between them.

“I did.” The laugh that spills out between them when she refills the glass and swallows the whole thing is the first concession on her part. “And both times I decided that I liked the idea of being alone on Christmas even less than being alone with you.”

“I’m glad you did.” He looks at her with a piercing stare, testing the waters, and is actually surprised when she doesn’t take a step back when he takes one toward her. He isn’t going to pretend, as if he was ever able to get away with it; if she’s ever let him get by with a single lie, which she hasn’t. “I didn’t come to apologize to you.”

“I know that. You’re too goddamn stubborn to know when to quit.” She breaks the stare and stands beside the window, looking out at the snow as it keeps falling; blanketing the sleepy town they’ve set up in. “I was wrong earlier.”

“Bones,” he sighs and sits on the bed, unnerved by how natural this feels, as if she never left, like they’re just settling in to strategize together. “You didn’t come here to apologize to me, either.”

“No,” she says, and Jim is sure he doesn’t imagine the uncomfortable expression that flashes across her face, a visible echo of his own discomfort at how familiar this is. “I came because I wanted to see you.”

“Bullshit,” he says, and then laughs at the astonished look on her face when he calls her bluff. “You wouldn’t have come to see me because you missed me. You’re too stubborn for that.”

Her eyes roll heavenward, but then she meets his eyes fearlessly, and he remembers what attracted him to her in the first place; what was misplaced somewhere along the way, which she found on her own, without him. “You don’t really know why I left, do you?”

“I assumed it was because you panicked.” Jim knows already that he was wrong, and her even, annoyed expression seems to confirm that.

“I panicked,” she sighs and looks back toward the scene outside the window. “I enlisted because I wanted more than a life as my husband’s wife, and I didn’t want to just be your wife, either.”

“Hey, wait a second. I’m not like—” Jim protests immediately.

Nora laughs quietly; her breath fogging the windowpane, obscuring the reflection of her face that Jim had been watching until it slowly fades into focus again. “No, you’re not a thing like him. And I know you didn’t mean it like that, so I’m telling you now.”

“You could have told me then.” It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, and he knows that now, because he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself any more than she had been.

“I could have done a lot of things,” she says firmly, and he watches her hair fall over her face before she pushes it aside. “I think about what could have happened every goddamn day.”

“Don’t,” Jim sighs and stands up, moving toward the window with her, bursting with questions he hasn’t asked yet, but doesn’t have the words to articulate them with. Her fingers are bare as ever, but the instinctive checks he did before coming to see her indicated that she’s still married to Joshua Darnell of Alpharetta. He came anyway, prepared for affirmation or dismissal, but not this, or the weighty guilt of making such a critical mistake that lowers onto him. “You don’t have to say it for my sake.”

“Why did you come here, Jim?”

“I promised that I’d come, one way or another. That’s all. No tricks, no games. I’m not even here to try and force anything out of you. You don’t have to do anything.”

Nora rests her hand on top of his in a strange mirror of the encounter in her office, and stands no more than a few, scant inches from his chest. “You don’t believe that a bit more than I do.”

He spreads his free arm innocently, but any words are lost when she takes his face between her hands and cuts him off.

“Don’t try to sell me the kind of story you tell other women.”

“Bones,” he laughs and shakes his head, cupping his hands over hers and pressing her work-roughened palms against his cheeks. “I couldn’t if I tried. I’m not going to spill my guts here, and I don’t need that from you, either. I just came for Christmas. Tomorrow I’ll be gone and—”

“And you’ll never see me again?” One of her eyebrows arches for her hairline.

“Not likely,” Jim laughs, “but I’ll be gone.”

Her eyelids fall closed for only a moment before she relaxes her hands into his, but Jim just waits for her to make her decision. She does, pulling away toward the bed, stepping out of shoes and loosening her tie. Jim staggers toward her, too, stripping his own uniform away in misplaced eagerness. He doesn’t actually want to know if things have changed for them, but he hopes they haven’t. He hopes they have, too.

“I didn’t come here to have sex with you, either,” he blurts out when she’s stepping out of her skirt and left wearing the same standard-issue underwear she wore before. There have been ladies in silk and lace that he’s been with since her, but nothing affects him as acutely as this, just her usual, familiar stare, eyebrows impatiently cocked in something akin to irritation. He loves her no less for it.

“Are you telling me you’re going to refuse it now?”

“No,” he adds with a hurried laugh. The fire in the hearth doesn’t warm the floor as well as he’d like, Jim forgets even that when his hand rests on Nora’s waist and he pulls her closer, smoothing the wrinkles on her forehead with his thumb until she yields and softens for him again. Only then does he allow himself to steal a whiskey-laced kiss that sends the electric charge he recognizes so well like a bolt down his spine. She remembers it too; by the way her body tightens and pulls away.

“Don’t be nervous, Bones,” he says gently, and the tension shatters around them when she bites his lip and they both start laughing while losing track of their hands.

“I’m not a blushing virgin, damn you,” she insists while gasping for breath, shoving back into the kiss with force Jim doesn’t expect from her. Her fingers find the rough peaks of his nipples, but Jim rests his palms on the plush curve of her ass, sending her off balance when she backs toward the bed. He catches her balance and lowers her onto the mattress gently, but she pulls him after her and rolls him onto his back before he can protest.

He’s still laughing from before, though neither of them have stopped, when his expression freezes in place as her wet lips burn a stinging trail of over-stimulated nerves down his belly. Her breath puffs over the head of his cock as though she has something she wants to say, but then her lips close over him and Jim swears strongly, fighting to keep his hips still and pressed down into the bed.

“Jesus, Bones.” Her tongue drags along the vein toward the head, and he actually pushes her off when the soft, wet muscle finds the ridge along the underside that’s always been a little ticklish, which she _knew_ , damn her.

Nora looks at him with an infuriating expression that he wants to kiss off of her. She beats him to it, stroking his spit-slick cock when she settles on top of him, with her knees planted on either side of his thighs and her tongue coaxing his past her lips.

“Let me grab a condom first.” Jim tries to push her back, but Nora moves fluidly and finds one in the heap of her clothing. He opens his mouth to say something, but stays quiet when she gives him a silencing look that he doesn’t mind very much; he doesn’t really want to talk, either.

“I missed you,” she breathes into his ear when she finishes smoothing it down the length of his shaft, while Jim’s lips are half-parted in raw pleasure. He chokes on the next suck of air, but she sinks down onto him before he can recover at all.

“You’re a force of nature,” he finally laughs, squeezing his eyes shut at the first, practiced roll of her hips that takes him in deeper. It isn’t as if he can’t feel her breaths rattling in her trembling chest, but Jim doesn’t want to look up and see if she’s laughing with him, or if she’s crying. There isn’t a universe in which he’s capable of handling the truth, what it would reveal about this moment between them; if it’s meaningless or everything that’s ever mattered that he’ll lose again.

“Shut up, Jim,” Nora sighs against his mouth. So he does.

He can hear the clock in the main room of the house heralding an hour much later than he thought, and he rolls her over onto her back and hisses at the blunted bite of her carefully trimmed nails across his back in protest. The burn of the marks lingers a few seconds longer, but then he gasps audibly until she surges up and captures his mouth soothingly, swallowing the sound as he falls head first into his climax. Vaguely, between the explosions that are his nerves firing off pulses of pleasure, he wonders whether she anticipated the quiet sighs and weakness of his limbs when his chest rests heavily against hers. She must have climaxed herself—she’s still throbbing around him, her own breath is short, and her face is blessedly slack and glowing—but when he surfaces again from the haze of his own glow and rolls to his side before his cock can soften inside her, he looks at her and feels the profound deepness of how well she knows him. Jim shivers.

Nora reaches toward him, and her hands are efficient but warm when she slips the condom off, ties it, and drops it into the shallow bowl Jim’s been using as an ashtray. “Get back over here,” she sighs, and he does when he catches the gentle edge to the command, pulling the blanket over their shoulders and tucking himself around her.

They fit like two pieces of a broken plate, all of her rough edges fitting against his. Jim tucks his knees behind hers and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. When he kisses the soft skin where he places it as tenderly as he can, he closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the back of her head. “Did I ever even have a chance, Bones?”

He counts five seconds before she breathes again, a low sigh.

“Yeah,” she says and turns in his arms, tucking her head underneath his chin and finding the precise spot she slept on before. He doesn’t expect her to say anything more, but she finally muffles the next two words against his skin, where they heat him like an ember, and leave him cold seconds later. “You did.”

Jim doesn’t initiate conversation for the rest of the night, and he’s mostly sure she falls asleep afterward while he stays awake to watch her, as if she’ll dissipate into nothing more than a dream when he closes his eyes. Instead, he combs his fingers through her tangled hair, smoothing it down over her shoulders and the taut, understated muscle of her back. He underestimated her, for all that he thought she was strong, he made the same fool mistake her husband did and thought she just wasn’t strong enough when he was the deficient one.

“I really fucked this one up, Bones,” he says to nothing in particular, and receives a quiet, sleepy sigh in response. Jim closes his eyes finally, and falls asleep stroking the soft skin of her side and telling himself that it’s not too late.

It isn’t wholly surprising when he wakes up with nothing but the vaguely warm spot where she was sleeping, the burnt remnants of the fire, and a folded sheet of paper on the table next to the whiskey she brought. Jim sits up slowly and rubs his face, pushing his hair back until it sticks up awkwardly. He’d dispelled the hope that he could come here and make everything better long before he actually arrived, but even now, the disappointment lingers like the warmth of the sheets next to him.

Finally, he stands and crosses the room, ignoring the sharp chill in the air that sets his hair on end, unfolding the note as soon as he lifts it from the table.

_Jim,_

_I hope you enjoy the whiskey, it’s the best one I’ve got left. You’ll need it more than I do when you’re back in Berlin._

_I know you don’t think this is over yet, and I’m sure you’ll be back whenever you want. I’ve still got a job to do here, so try and hold off until I’m home._

_Merry Christmas_

_Bones_

He searches her handwriting for some clue in the pale light, but there are only a few blotches in the ink: the pause in her thoughts; the hesitation over an unfamiliar signature. Finally, he feels a touch of warmth from the air, and begins to smile.


End file.
